Meanwhile, Felicity co-creator J.J. Abrams was increasingly smitten with Garner's acting. "She had this spark," he says. "She could be tough, but she was also vulnerable and funny." Three years later, when he sold the Alias concept to Touchstone Television, he made Garner his Sydney. To handle the show's martial-arts action sequences, Garner hit the gym "every day for a month" and began studying taekwondo. Now "I do all the fights myself," she says proudly. "And the other night I came down 100 feet on a wire. That's high!"

In fact, Garner may be taking Sydney's smackdown demeanor home from work. When a family pet triggered the burglar alarm at the couple's L.A. home recently, she and Foley crept down the stairs to see what was up. "He had a baseball bat," she recently told Esquire, "and I was behind him thinking, 'What can I do first? Elbow? Knee to the crotch? Backspin hook kick?' " Most nights at home are quieter, with Garner and Foley hanging out with their cat Wesley and two dogs -- Maggie Mae, a beagle mix, and Charlie Rose, a Maltese -- and helping each other rehearse. "I'll pass him my script and he'll pass me his," Garner says. "But sometimes I come home after work and he's asleep -- so I'll run my lines with my dogs."